The International Conference on the Responsibility to Protect is scheduled to get underway this evening with an opening reception hosted by André Nollkaemper, Chair of the conference and professor of Public International Law at the faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam.

Before things get too far underway, I’d like to highlight some of the expertise and variety of presenters at the conference.

Beginning with the Chair, professor Nollkaemper has extensive practical experience involving cases before the European Court on Human Rights, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, courts of the Netherlands and consultancy for a variety of international and national organizations. If you’ve been following my posts and the name seems vaguely familiar it’s because I mentioned him yesterday as a follow blogger for The Booker.eu.

The United Nations has a number of present and former representatives such as Edward Luck Special Advisor on R2P to the Secretary – General since 2007 as well as three UN ambassadors.

Of course the academic community is well represented with speakers from a few of the big names like Harvard and Cambridge as well as research and policy centres located throughout North America and Europe. A few notables are the US institute for Peace, the Global Centre for R2P, the Irish Centre for Human Rights (shout out to my alumi!), the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and of course the Atlantic Human Rights Centre.

And finally, the NGO community is represented by the International Coalition for the R2P which has become detailed reservoir for anything involving R2P.

As things get underway I’ll provide a more detailed backgrounder on some of the participants.

On the schedule for this evening is an opening keynote address to be delivered by Ambassador Stig Elvemar, Chair of CONUN during the EU Swedish Presidency in 2009.

Continuing on my last post about the Rome Statute Review, I thought a summary of some key issues which are being discussed would be pertinent prior to things getting underway here at the R2P conference.

Highlighted as another example of civil society bridging the gap between exclusionary policy development and inclusionary non-governmental participation, The Coalition for the International Criminal Court is doing a fantastic job at providing current updates and breaking down the Review into thematic groupings. Principally, proceedings can be segregated into two sections: Amendments and Stocktaking.

Under Amendment items, states parties will discuss the following proposals (links are backgrounders):

* The revision of Article 124 of the Rome Statute;
* The crime of aggression;
* The inclusion of the use of certain weapons as war crimes in the context of an armed conflict not of an international character.

In regards to article 124, because of its underutilization I wouldn’t be surprised if it is revoked. Not only this, its provisional nature suggests that perhaps now would be the time to have it shuffled out the door.

The crime of aggression is a little more complicated. Although the crime is identified under Article 5, no definition is provided (in contrast to other crimes identified in the RS) which has led to a problem of establishing and exercising jurisdiction. Where the issue of jurisdiction becomes controversial is regarding which parties need to accept the ICC’s jurisdiction before the office of the prosecution can investigate. The majority of states recently declared an interest in having both the aggressor and victim states acceptance of ICC jurisdiction set as the threshold. A minority of states expressed that an acceptance of jurisdiction by only the victim state would be sufficient. Additionally, the role of the Security Council is outlined in a proposal which has been submitted to the Review and can be found here.

The third item to be dealt with under Amendments is identifying the use of certain weapons during a non-international armed conflict as war crimes. These weapons can be summarized as poisonous gases and what is referred to as dumb-dumb bullets (bullets which upon impact fragment causing superfluous harm). These weapons have long been outlawed by the Geneva Conventions (which doesn’t mean they haven’t been used) and I doubt any state will put up a fuss over this inclusion.

The process of stocktaking is much more holistic in nature and is designed to provide a rough measurement of how the ICC is progressing and what has been its major successes and failures. In an effort to provide some structure to the exercise, the following will be the main focal points:

* Impact of the Rome Statute system on victims and affected communities;
* Complementarity;
* Cooperation;
* Peace and Justice

If interested in further coverage of the Review I’d encourage a look at the Coalition on the ICC’s webpage which is linked above.

Marc Gionet

Marc Gionet is a rabble.ca blogger and Project Manager and Researcher at the Atlantic Human Rights Centre.